"Meru": Filming the Epic Climb

World-renowned climber Jimmy Chin and filmmaker Elizabeth "Chai" Vasarhelyi talk about the challenges of making Meru, a documentary about Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin, and Renan Ozturk's attempt to make the first successful ascent of the Shark's Fin on Mount Meru—a climb that has thwarted every previous summit attempt by the world's most elite climbers.

The National Geographic Live series brings thought-provoking presentations by today’s leading explorers, scientists, photographers, and performing artists right to you. Each presentation is filmed in front of a live audience at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C. New clips air every Monday.

This is the test of the master climber. Jimmy and Conrad have climbed Everest four-five times. This is a whole different kind of climbing. Sixteen days up here we've lost half our food. And 90 percent of the mountain was still above us. The center of the universe is unattainable.

We called this talk The Making of Meru to try to give you guys some insight on how a story like this, you know a climb like this of rather epic, historic proportions can be translated into a film for a general audience that may have absolutely no knowledge of climbing.

I started working on this project not really thinking about making a feature documentary. It was really just about shooting for posterity, and... this is-- all the commotion is about this mountain. For years and years and years Conrad, who was my mentor had been dreaming about this climb. Over the years it started to become bigger and bigger in my mind. And when Conrad finally asked me to go as well as Renan in 2008, I was... I was honored but I was also very intimidated. We went and made an attempt and failed, and then made a second attempt and through the process I made multiple edits of the film and it didn't quite get to where I wanted to get and so that's when I actually met Chai in 2012. And I had no idea what kind of filmmaker Chai was. I'd just heard that she was a filmmaker and we met at this conference I was supposed to give a talk, actually about Meru. And I met her outside the talk and I said you know, we were having a chat and I invited her to come to the talk and I was like, “I'm giving a talk right inside here five minutes from now.” And she was like, “Great.” And... I was like, “well, you know Feel free to come check it out.” And she was like, “Hmm, no.” And I was like, “Okay, I see how it is.” But, uh, she... she did actually come to the talk uh, unbeknownst to me and then... And then afterwards we connected and I shared my last edit with her.

And when I finally had a chance to watch what Jimmy had sent me, I was just struck this material, I'd never seen anything like it before. And what was so special about this material is unique to Jimmy and Renan and their particular skill-set where they are professional climbers and also professional shooters. And it was just... like, how visceral the footage was, how authentic it was really moved me and... then they had this incredibly dramatic story and characters that could come to life on the big screen. I mean, we struggled for a while in terms of exactly what needed to be included what was the point, like how do you set up the stakes in a way that makes sense because just the accuracy of how we described the mountain was very important to you. And it was very important to the authenticity of the movie. It also set up why... the kind of how Jimmy and Renan skill-set was so unique in that they were climbers of the caliber that could climb something like Meru and also shoot it at the same time.

Well, the shooting on it was certainly one of the obvious great challenges, I think. To give it a little context there. I've been shooting expeditions for over ten years before we embarked on this trip. And I do different types of expeditions all around the world and some expeditions are really based on the production where the production kind of almost finances or funds the trip and it's really about shooting and coming back with a story. And I had done quite a few trips like that and sometimes I feel like that's the... the tail wagging the dog. This climb was the opposite. This climb was about the climb, it wasn't about the shooting. And you approach it very differently. We had, you know, 400 yaks and a huge team when we went to Everest to shoot The Wildest Dream. And on this climb it was Renan and I shouldering each a small camera, and so... it's a totally different approach because it's much more documentary-style and you can't-- you're not setting up shots. You're shooting it much more like a photojournalist would shoot it. And there's, you know pros and cons to that kind of shooting because you miss a lot of shots that you wanna set up but you know, you're obviously very busy climbing. And so, it really made it kind of the ultimate challenge as kind of a filmmaker for... expedition shooting and it was kind of the combination of... all my years of experience with filming. And we set out to climb with seven days of food we brought this two person portaledge that barely fits two people and we were fitting three people in it but with like tons of alpine climbing gear. And we always joked that we can't say anything to Conrad about the portaledge because he would always be like “Well, the Russians would fit four guys in here”you know, it's like... And he's just, you know, he's cut from... a different cloth than the rest of us. So, you kinda keep your mouth shut and you know that the climbing is the priority and so, in a way there's this pressure almost like sometimes you're almost scared to bring out the camera because you might be slowing down the climb. And that's kind of the ethos of this kind of shooting is that you only shoot when you can but the shooting should never hold up the climbing, so... there's a ton of shots that we missed and I try not to dwell on those too much but And, you know in the documentary world if you didn't get it it didn't happen, so... you know, then you're juggling that pressure.

I mean, just a zillion details here that, you know they're not backing up their footage they're bringing a finite amount of cards up on the mountain, alright they have no batt-- like no way to charge their batteries. So, they're... again they're bringing 12 batteries 'cause it weighs... it was more efficient to bring 12 batteries than bring a charger. A solar charger because there are only two hours of direct daylight. And so, weight is a real issue but I can't, you know, as a documentary filmmaker I can't conceive of not being able to back-up my footage. And not-- and having a finite amount of tape. So, it just charges these shots I mean-- it's a lot of pressure and that's one of the things that makes the footage just so special. A lot of the rules of shooting go out the window. Like, you're supposed to have a head and a tail to every shot. You know, so that there's five seconds in front of it in the beginning of the shot and there's five or ten seconds at the end of the shot so the editor has some space to cut. But our shots don't have heads and tails. And when you watch it, you know the... it all-- 'cause you have to hold your breath when you're shooting up there and it's really hard to hold your breath up there. So, all the heads and tails go like this... And then the end of the shot is like... And they're like only 15 seconds long, this is no joke. I mean, we'd sit in the edit room we'd be like there must be more. There must be more. You know, like, we... it... I don't know, it was... It posed this, you had these like kind of jewels of footage yet with some very real-like narrative constraints around it where there just wasn't that much. You know, like my last film before this we had 400 hours of dailies. This, I mean, there must have been... only 15 hours total of mountain footage between 2008 and 2011. Most of which was like they're walking in. Gangotri, I'm like, “Great!”

No, it was classic because we'd be sitting in the editing room and everybody would be glued to the screen and we'd be watching this clip and it'd be like this great, great clip and everybody is excited and then it would end and then everybody would look at me. And I'd be like, “Well, let me explain something to you. We're at 20,000 feet, I'm like trying to stack the rope because Conrad's basically starting to get to the point where like, You're still shooting? You should be stacking the rope. You should be re-racking the gear.” But that's hard to explain to your editor when you're trying to make a film. This clip is the set up.

Woo-hoo! Jon Krakauer: The Shark's Fin in Euro Central (unclear) This climb has seen more attempts and more failures than any route in the Himalaya. Wow! Headwaters of the Ganges River one of the most sacred rivers on Earth. The center of the universe. It's this weird nexus that sort of it's the point where heaven and earth and hell all come together. The thing that gives it the name the Shark's Fin is this 1500 foot blade of this beautiful, flawless granite way up high, you know, 20,000 feet. This is the test of the master climber. You know it's been tried by so many great climbers I don't know, 20 times. Some of the best climbers in the world have tried and failed on this route. Meru is not just hard. it's hard in this really complicated way. You can't just be a good ice-climber. You can't just be good at altitude you can't just be a good rock-climber. You gotta be able to ice-climb, mix-climb and you gotta be able to do big wall climbing at 20,000 feet. It's all that stuff wrapped in one package that's defeated so many good climbers and will probably defeat you and maybe will defeat everybody for all time. That to a certain kind of mindset is an irresistible appeal.

"Meru": Filming the Epic Climb

World-renowned climber Jimmy Chin and filmmaker Elizabeth "Chai" Vasarhelyi talk about the challenges of making Meru, a documentary about Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin, and Renan Ozturk's attempt to make the first successful ascent of the Shark's Fin on Mount Meru—a climb that has thwarted every previous summit attempt by the world's most elite climbers.

The National Geographic Live series brings thought-provoking presentations by today’s leading explorers, scientists, photographers, and performing artists right to you. Each presentation is filmed in front of a live audience at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C. New clips air every Monday.